Tell Me Why
by Stormchilde
Summary: Harper answers some questions. Leave me a question in your review and I'll ask him why.
1. Chapter 1

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Fire? I hate fire. It brings back all manner of old, painful memories. I can feel the heat of the flames as we burn the bodies of those infested with Magog larvae. The smell is horrible and the sound…  
It's quiet except for the crackling of skin and the high pitched wails of dying infant Magog. We learned the hard way that you can't kill the host and that will kill the Magog. The infested have to be burned alive in order to kill the Magog otherwise the little bastards just burst out and try to find a new host. The host can't feel anything or at least that's what we tell ourselves as we pile them up and pour kerosene over their bodies. I hope they can't feel anything cause the look in their eyes is already enough to make me want to scream.   
I use to have nightmares about Siobhan and Declan coming back and setting fire to me so that I would know how it feels to be burned alive, to have Magog larvae trying to escape the flames by burrowing deeper inside.

The Nietzscheans like to use fire too. Sometimes when they'd get bored, the Ubers would surround a portion of the camp and set fire to the shelters just to see how many humans could escape the flames, see what lengths we'd go to get away. People would die long before the fire overtook them, trampled under the feet of the stronger and faster. I remember seeing the Nietzscheans laughing, placing bets on how many would survive.

And who can forget another one of the Niets' favorite pastimes – beating you with a whip until your back is in bleeding ribbons. That's not the end of it though. They sprinkle you liberally with magnesium powder and turn you loose, you think that it's all over and you're home free until that igniter pea snaps against your neck. For just a second there's an intense cold that turns into severe pain as the fire flashes over your skin so hard and fast that it rips the breath right out of you and dumps you into the dirt. The flame dies quick but fire eats at your flesh for hours, no amount of water will quench it, nothing eases the pain but unconsciousness so deep that it borders on comatose. Not that the Ubers are gonna let you nap through their entertainment, they make sure you feel every second of it.

That's why I hate fire.


	2. Why are you wearing a wedding ring?

_This refers to the scene in "D Minus Zero" where Harper is trying to fix the firing controls, if you look at his left hand he's wearing a wedding band._

You know I was pretty upset with myself at that point. I felt like I had let everybody down and that it was my fault that the Andromeda was damaged so badly that we had to hide. I had let those fighters get past me and Tyr had to bail me out and in doing so he got into trouble with Dylan. I wanted so badly to impress Tyr and to make Dylan proud of me but it didn't work out like I had planned.  
I was always trying to impress people, that's what my Da told me. Mum said people should like me for who I was not for who they wanted me to be but it's a habit I've never been able to break.

There were only a few things I brought off Earth with me when I left with Beka and Bobby. Being an Uber slave didn't leave me with a whole lot of personal items, just a few small things that could be easily hidden, one of them was the wedding band my Da gave my Mum. When they died I kept her ring, it had been in the Harper family for six generations and I wasn't about to leave it for some grave robbing scum.

When I get upset I like to wear it, it helps me remember the sound of her voice and the touch of her hands. I feel like they are still with me, grounding me and helping me move forward when all I want to do is find a place to hide.  
That's why I was wearing a ring when Dylan asked me to build the FMS.


	3. Why can't you conjugate English?

I grew up speaking Esperanto as my primary language, English was second and seldom used because the Ubers spoke it. We started speaking Esperanto when the Dragans took over. What is Esperanto you ask? It's 'an artificial international language based on words common to the chief European languages' according to Webster's Dictionary. The Nietzscheans could figure out some of the words but by combining so many different languages we confused the hell out of them. It was nearly impossible to translate even if you tried to use the words you knew in context  
See if you can figure this one out: "Vi should iri hejmo." Any idea what that means? Shout it at an Uber and he'd probably figure it was a threat. I don't know what languages the other words are and unless you knew them you'd never be able to figure it out from the single English word in there. It actually translates as "You should go home."  
When Beka took me on as her engineer I was still so used to speaking Esperanto that I had to stop and think about how to say something in plain English. Do you know how hard that was for me? I'd get excited or in a hurry and forget that Beka didn't know Esperanto anymore than the Ubers did and she'd get frustrated because I was apparently speaking gibberish. It took almost a year for Beka to teach me how to speak plain ol' English. You know what helped me most to learn it? Listening to the music from Earth in Beka's collection. It drove her nuts to hear me so I usually ended up practicing it in the engine room where my 'caterwauling' was drowned out by the noise of the engines. Every once in while my tongue will slip back to Esperanto, just listen to some of the 'bloopers' and you'll hear it.

That's why Beka said I could barely conjugate English.


	4. Why are you so fond of Beka?

For ilexia

I apologize for making you wait so long, the muse has been stubborn.

Thanks for the R&R MaryRose, you ROCK!

rider-of-snakes - I hope to have your answer up very soon.

* * *

Why do I love Beka? 

What's not to love?!

Seriously. Love is one of the strange words that means many things.

I love weisbrau and a good steak but not in the same way that I love her.

My love for Beka is a much stronger emotion that comes from being tested in ways both intentional and accidental. We rely on each other for many things and that includes our lives. She saved my life more than once and though it's rarely mentioned I have done the same for her.

I choose who I love very carefully, because loosing someone you love is painful and I have had more of that kind of pain than I care for. So my love for Beka is a singular thing, not the same kind of love I hold for Trance or any of the other women in my life. (Stop laughing, I can hear you, you know.)

Beka rescued me from a place both terrible and part of my heart. She chose me - someone she barely knew, over someone she loved with all her heart and to me, that was an ultimate sacrifice. After that, she could have set me adrift anywhere but she didn't, she encouraged me to stay, helped me to better myself and to see myself for what I am. I love Beka the way I do because she loves me. It's something that grows because two people, not just one, feed it.

We have shared a lot of ourselves, we don't have to put on a mask and be someone else for each other, we are comfortable with the other person as they are. You know what I mean … how you try to be the person that you think whoever you love wants you to be. It's not like that with us; we love the person they are, not the person we wish they were.

I love her because she has made me a better person, because she cares enough to make a place for me in her life. I have not known a love like that since I was just a child. She's beautiful and strong, wily and gentle. She lets me know the limits of our relationship; I know where I stand with her. I still test those limits pretty often but it's strangely comforting to know that she won't let me get away with anything. Knowledge is power, especially for the weaker. She would do anything for me and I would give my life for hers. Everything she has done for me may have had a few selfish undertones but it was mainly to help me. She never lies to me, I always know what the score is and the fact that she trusts me so much that she allows me into her life is one more reason that I love her.

Trust is something that I prize and very few people in my life have been people I could trust in a positive way. I have always known that people want me for their own reasons, but Beka has never tried to blow smoke on why she cares what happens to me.

I know I have been a bother to her, a drain on her finances, bought her more trouble than I think I am worth and still, she has never turned me out. She listens to my schemes, even if she seldom accepts them but the fact that she treats me like a contributing adult makes me feel good about myself.

Other people in my life, though beloved, have never wanted me for me, but for what I could do for them and they often abandoned me when they got what they needed.

Beka is everything I ever wanted in a friend.


End file.
